Huawei and ZTE Deny Adding Back-Doors into their Software for Chinese Government

Published on: 13th Sep 2012

Note -- this news article is more than a year old.

China's two main telecoms infrastructure vendors have denied that they have inserted back doors into their software at the request of the Chinese government.

The denial came at a hearing of the USA's House Intelligence Committee which
is holding open meetings to discuss the "National Security Threats Posed by
Chinese Telecom Companies Huawei and ZTE"

At the hearing, Rep. Michael Rogers, Michigan Republican and chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee stated that "Huawei and ZTE provide a wealth of
opportunities for Chinese intelligence agencies to insert malicious hardware or
software implants into critical telecommunications components and systems,"

However the companies denied this, saying that any such back-doors would be
software bugs, not deliberately inserted.

"Huawei has not and will not jeopardize our global commercial success nor
the integrity of our customers' networks for any third party or government
ever," said Charles Ding, Huawei, corporate senior vice president.

When pressed as to whether the companies would comply with Chinese government
requests to insert back-doors for its security services to use, Ding said that
to cooperate with such requests "would be corporate suicide for our company."

However, the Chairman said in his opening statement that following an
invitation by Huawei to investigate the allegations against it, that both
companies "provided little actual evidence to ameliorate the Committee's concerns."

He particularly noted that what the Committee would consider to be internal
corporate documents could not be handed over as that would violate Chinese
state-secret laws, resurrecting concerns that the two companies are closely
connected to the Chinese government.

Both companies have always denied that they have such links to the government
or Chinese military.